Neuromarketing

Introduction to neuromarketing:

Neuromarketing refers to a group of neuroscientific techniques like eye tracking, biometrics, EMG, EEG and fMRI. These are applied to analyse and understand human behaviour and consumer decision-making in relation to markets. The relevance of neuroscience in marketing is a debatable issue.

Pros:

Those in favour of the argument feel that neuromarketing can help us understand how humans create, store, recall, and relate to brands in their everyday life. The advantage is that the methods can measure attention, arousal and emotional responses without the need to explicitly ask someone what they are thinking or why. This involves viewing how familiar brand logos engage the brain’s memory systems or examining whether the direction of eye gaze of people in advertisements influences how much they are able to engage them. Cognitive neuroscience helps identify whether marketing activities trigger negative effects such as overconsumption in a social context. Going beyond focus groups in traditional advertising methods, the techniques are used to detect branding moments within TV commercials, identify consumer preferences and discover the consumer buy button. It also involves testing whether the brain’s electrical activity varies when the consumer is watching subtly different advertisements. In notable research emerging from institutions like Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University, scientists are using fMRI to identify parts of the brain that influence buying decisions. For neuromarketing to be useful, it should be able to predict marketing success better than measures of opinion and behaviour. For example, one study has reported that the response of the brain’s reward system to newly released songs predicted their later success.

While neuromarketing is a relatively new discipline, it draws deeply from neuroscience, which, in turn has a strong academic history and has made significant contributions towards better living. It also provides scope for scientists and companies to develop proprietary technological advances based on marketing. The ethical concerns in neuromarketing are common to many research methods which happen without informed consent and take advantage of the consumer. With fast paced developments in technology, equipment is set to become less bulky and invasive (for example, a mobile phone today is capable of reading biometric data). This brings forth positive expectations of neuroscientific interventions. Neuromarketing is gaining more significance as it integrates different disciplines.

In recognition of its potential, some of the biggest companies in the world have begun investing in neuromarketing. Formerly a dedicated neuromarketing consulting firm, NeuroFocus is now a subsidiary of marketing research firm AC Nielson. Ad agency DDB has appointed an academic as a resident scientist to apply neuroscientific theory in order to enhance its client ad campaigns. Companies like Intel, Pepsico, Google, PayPal, Microsoft, Citi, etc. are spending millions of dollars in this area.

Cons:

Critics believe that neuromarketing is not very useful at this point in time because the studies are in the nascent stage and it is unknown to many. Its techniques are able